A Call to an Authentic Life

by keith on August 17, 2009

His disciples asked him and said to him, “Do you want us to fast? How should we pray? Should we give to charity? What diet should we observe?”

Jesus said, “Don’t lie, and don’t do what you hate, because all things are disclosed before heaven. After all, there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, and there is nothing covered up that will remain undisclosed.” — Gospel of Thomas (6)

Eight words to live by: “Don’t lie, and don’t do what you hate…” It is a call to be authentic in both your words (or your interactions with other people) and your actions (or that which consumes your day-to-day life).

How many people out there are living lives they want no part of? They’re stuck in jobs they hate, and they engage in relationships that leave them unfulfilled. Societal pressure, parental expectations, or other obligations force us all into a mould of some sort, and we often realize too late in life that we’re people we don’t want to be.

This is why we as a species haven’t evolved our consciousness for so long. We’re so addicted to the repetitive cycle of working to pay bills, acquiring “stuff” and driving the economy that we haven’t had time to intelligently move forward in human history. If anything, our addiction to material wealth has driven us to devolve into more animalistic behavior. (And no, I don’t feel unpatriotic saying that. Our Founding Fathers were not capitalists. They were farmers, and they saw America becoming an agrarian society, not the consumeristic beast that it has become today.)

This is the price of living inauthentically. If it is the Christ in us that is the hope of glory, if we are the slumbering pieces of the Divine, how can we really be inauthentic before heaven and not suffer the consequences? We can’t lie to the gods or God. The self cannot lie to the self.